System for Determining Allocation of Tape Drive Resources for a Secure Data Erase Process

Abstract

A system is provided to ensure a timely secure data erase by determining whether allocating an additional tape drive would improve secure data erase performance by evaluating a quantity of physical volumes to be secure data erased, a maximum queued threshold, an average time to an erasure deadline and a minimum expiration threshold. An additional tape drive is allocated for the secure data erase process when it is determined that allocating an additional tape drive would improve secure data erase performance.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]The present application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / ______ (Docket No. TUC9-2006-0217US1), “Method for Determining Allocation of Tape Drive Resources for a Secure Data Erase Process,” filed concurrently herewith, and naming Kishi et al. as inventors.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The disclosure relates generally to automated data storage systems and more particularly, to a system and for selectively performing a secure data erase.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]A virtual tape system is a tape management system such as a special storage device or group of devices and software which manages data such that the data appears to be stored entirely on tape cartridges when portions of the data may actually be located in faster, hard disk storage. Programming for a virtual tape system is sometimes referred to as virtual tape server (VTS), although these terms may be used interchangeably, unless otherwise specifically indicated. A virtu...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]Specifically, in one embodiment, the evaluation includes comparing the quantity of physical volumes to be secure data erased to the maximum queued threshold and in response to the quantity of physical volumes to be secure data erased being greater than the maximum queued threshold, calculating an average time to the erasure deadline. The evaluation continues by comparing the average time to the erasure deadline to the minimum expiration threshold, and allocating an additional tape drive to the secure data erase process in response to the average time to the erasure deadline being less than the minimum expiration threshold. In one embodiment improved performance includes performing the secure data erasure before a secure data erasure deadline.

Problems solved by technology

The host cannot distinguish between physical and virtual volumes, or physical and virtual drives.

One issue of VTS systems is the management of data within the tapes.

The VTS system may have a number of duplicate, invalid, latent or unused copies of data.

This could put long-expired physical volumes which may contain sensitive data (e.g., credit card information, social security number) at risk for being accessed and retained.

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